We lose little things all the time without realizing, but the feel of pencil on paper has to be one of the most overlooked casualties of the digital age. We’re not complaining—this is a blog, after all—but we will make a suggestion. Next time you have an idea, don’t send yourself an email. Take out a notebook and write it down. It makes a difference, even if you can’t say exactly how.

This Hlaska notebook isn’t more than a bunch of blank sheets in cloth binding, but the little change may do a lot more for your creative juices than you think.

(Thanks to acquire for the dig.)

Most analog technologies have gone the way of the 8-track by now, but film is making a decent stand, based largely on lomophile tricks like this one.

The above picture is “red-scaled,” meaning the film is inserted backwards and shot through a protective filter that cuts out most higher frequency light. A few clever folks have started making film specifically for red-scaling—meaning you won’t need quite as much technical elbow grease—but what they’re selling is really just pre-filtered film. It takes a good picture, though, as you can see.

Digital cameras are good for feeding blogs, but analog has charms all its own, as we’ve noticed a few times before.

This twin-lens model comes from Superheadz in Japan, where lomography is already a full-blown trend. The shutter opens manually, so you’ll have to count on your own reflexes to make sure you don’t overexpose the film or end up with a picture that’s too dark to use.

It takes a while to get the hang of it…but that’s half the fun.

We still love the analog life, but we might have been a little premature when we urged you to snag a clothbound notebook. After all, sometimes you want something a little bit more flexible.

These notebooks come from BillyKirk and Norwegian designer Ryder Robinson. We aren’t sure about the bee, but we’ve always thought there was something elegant about a writing pad with a bird on it.

We’ve always said you’d miss analog when it’s gone, but we didn’t expect things to go this far.

Now that the down-and-dirty look of the Polaroid has gone the way of the dinosaur, we’re scrambling to get it back. Poladroid is a program that takes digital camera images and adds a touch of blurring, that familiar light green tint, and ends up with something that looks like it was printed from a handheld camera and shaken impatiently until it developed. Just like grandma used to make!

The only thing better would be if they started making actual Polaroids again.

We were scanning over ACL’s American List when we ran across this Portland-made notebook. We’ve gushed about notebooks before, but this one has the added advantage of fitting in your back pocket…particularly useful for capturing those occasional flashes of brilliance.

And everything looks better on graph paper.